Electronic Arts (EA) is preparing to resurrect and re-imagine at least a “couple” of classic franchises.
Although EA Labels president Frank Gibeau refused to specify which titles EA was considering, he did emphasize the company would code the games in a “fresh” way and bring “something new” to the equation of the franchise.
“We do have a couple of old franchises that we’re looking at right now… Re-imagining them and bringing them back,” Gibeau told CVG.
“We’ve got 25 years of good IPs and I’ve worked on a few of them in my career like Road Rash and the Strike series. So I have a strong affinity for a lot of the things we’ve done in the past.”
Gibeau noted that plans to re-imagine some of the classics would closely mirror EA’s strategy towards Medal of Honor.
“When we brought it back; we looked at going after more modern themes… The war that’s happening now as opposed to a historical war. That was the reason we [resurrected] it.
“But when we look at Road Rash, the Strike series or some of these other franchises – we can’t just put them on new tech with the same gameplay from ten years ago, we’ve got to have something new.”
What video game franchises would you like to see resurrected?
Personally, I would really enjoy having another go at Starflight, which was developed by Binary Systems and published by EA way back in 1986. A sequel – Starflight 2: Trade Routes of the Cloud Nebula – quickly followed its popular predecessor in 1989.
Coded for DOS, Starflight 2 introduced a number of new features, including an interstellar trade-based game economy, upgraded combat model and dozens of alien species which were scattered across an even larger game map.
I must admit, I once spent an entire summer playing Starflight 2 and even wrote a captain’s “log” in a spiral notebook (those were the days before real multitasking) so I could keep track of colonized planets and the alien races I encountered.
Just think about it: an entire universe offering countless hours of fun packed into two, 5¼-inch floppies. Can you imagine how much better a rebooted version of Starflight would be?
